dnGrep - Free GUI "grep" and "sed" tool for Windows

If you are familiar with UNIX/Linux operating system, you must be using a lot of "grep" command to search for string inside text files, and "sed" command to find and replace string in the text files.

There are identical command in Windows such as "find", "findstr" or even the PowerShell "Select-String", but they are just not as easy to use as "grep" in UNIX/Linux.

There are also GUI tools for Windows which aim to perform the "grep" and "sed" function, majority of the good ones need you to pay for it, except dnGrep which is licensed under GNU GPL v2 and is therefore free for use.

dnGrep is indeed a very powerful find and/or replace tool for Windows. It can not only search for text or keywords inside the target file(s), but also able to perform a text replace action in target text file(s).

Beside normal text files, it is also able to search inside MS Word documents and PDF files. It can also search inside archived file.

You can perform your search by plain text input, or XPath query language, or regular expression (regex), or even phonetic.

You can also specify to search for files in a folder (and sub-folders) within a particular date range in which they are created or last modified.

The search result is displayed with yellow background highlight, together with the line number in the target document. Double click on the search result will open up the target document for further action.

The beauty of its replace function is that, the replace action can be undone.

You can also create "bookmarks" to store frequently used search keywords and conditions.

dnGrep is lightweight, fast in action, powerful and free for use. It is an essential 3-party tool in your Windows computers.

Click here to go to the download page of dnGrep.

My UGREEN LP144 gravity handphone holder for car CD/DVD slot

Handphone holder (a.k.a. phone cradle) is a very handy and useful gadget when we want to hold our phone in our car at eye level.

One of the common use case is when we use our handphone for navigation on Google Map, or Waze, or some other similar navigation apps.

There are generally 5 types of handphone holders available in the market:

• CD/DVD player slot holding type
• Air-cond vent fin clipping type
• Suction mount type which attached onto the windscreen
• Standing type putting on top of the car front panel
• Rearview mirror attaching type

I would recommend the first 2 types, because they can take advantage of your car aircond blowing to cool down your phone. If you attach your phone onto the windscreen or put it on top of the car front panel, the sunlight will heat it up to a high temperature, which is unfavourable to the phone and its Li-ion battery.

Depends on the design of your car front panel, you can choose the more popular air-cond vent fin clipping type, or the CD/DVD player slot holding type.

My UGREEN LP144  gravity handphone holder of car CD/DVD slot holding type costs at RM20++ and has a simple packaging.

This is how it looks like (front and back).

 

As you can see from the picture, it has 3 rubber pads to be inserted into the car CD/DVD slot to hold it firmly. The big button at the back of the center rubber pad is used to align the rubber pads for insertion and removal.

This handphone holder can still be used even when there is CD/DVD inside the player. It would not affect the CD/DVD playing.

I have chosen it because of its special 3 arms design, whereby when the lower arm is pulled down, the left and right arms will contract. When you slot in your phone, the weight of the phone will pull down the lower arm, forming a strong grip by the side arms.

As such, it can hold your phone firmly, and you don't need to be worried about the phone fall off the holder when you are driving on bumpy road.

This holder can fit for handphones with width up to about 8.3cm. If the phone is too large (for example, the Huawei Mate 20 X with width of 8.54cm), then might not be able to fit in.

For my car, the phone is sitting at the position just nice to be cooled by the air-cond behind it.

The only thing I dislike about this product is that, it will produce rattling sound when you are driving on uneven road, and there is no phone put on it. This is caused by its plastic arms knocking onto the center part and producing the noise. Anyhow, this problem does not exist when there is a phone put on it.

If the manufacturer can enhance its design by putting a layer of thin soft sponge at the knocking points which produces the noise, then it will be a perfect product.

Free database clients able to access multiple DBMS - DBeaver CE & DBSL Database Browser

Nowadays it is not unusual for IT personnel to deal with multiple databases at the same time. There is also a high chance of the need to deal with databases in different database management system (DBMS).

It will be nice to have a universal or multi-platform GUI database client as a single tool for accessing databases in different DBMS. If you are searching for this kind of database tool, and prefer for free solution, I would recommend 2 of them.

DBeaver Community Edition is a more popular one, which can run in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It is a beast with extensive number of features to view and manage the databases.

The Community Edition supports a vast number of SQL relational databases, while the non-free Enterprise Edition supports additional NoSQL databases including Apache Cassandra, Apache Hive, Hadoop, MongoDB, InfluxDB, Redis, etc.

The Community Edition itself can open and manage most (if not all) of the famous DBMS such as Azure SQL server, IBM DB2, Firebird/Interbase, Informix, Ingres, MySQL/MariaDB, SAP MaxDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL server, SQLite, Sybase, Teradata, etc.

It also supports file-based database like DBF, Microsoft Access, and even CSV file.

With ODBC connection, it supports all databases that is able to be connected via ODBC.

You can open multiple databases and multiple tables at the same time.

It has complete set of table management functions, including import/export and even generating mock data for testing or demo purpose.

If the table relationship is well defined in the database schema, DBeaver can also display the ER-diagram at a mouse click.

DBeaver, even though with the free Community Edition, has everything you need to work with the databases.

But sometimes we just need a simple, lightweight, straightforward, and preferably portable (no installation needed) database tool. Database Browser by DB Software Laboratory will be the one that suit for this purpose. It only run in Windows, either as installed application or as portable application.

Database Browser is very easy to use, and mainly used to view and/or edit the database content. The flow is simple: you select a database, it will list down all the tables. You select a table, it will list out the records in the table.

Database Browser supports famous DBMS such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Interbase/Firebird, OleDB, SQLite, BDE, MongoDB, etc.

With ODBC connection, it supports all databases that is able to be connected via ODBC.

The list is not as extensive as DBeaver, but is still comparatively more than most other database tool in the market.

It can also show the ER diagram in its SQL Query Builder function. The SQL Query Builder works in a way with GUI interface similar to Microsoft Access.

It supports data import from Excel file, and export to CSV, TAB, Excel, RTF or HTML files.

If you just want to browse or edit the database content, Database Browser will be a handy tool for you.

If you want to deal with views, indexes, stored procedures, sequences, triggers, and even database parameter fine tuning, then you will need DBeaver.